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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Welcome to Olympia folks

I want to use this very special session of the legislature to get something off my chest. This one goes out to all your out of towners. We still love you, though, in the 20th LD. Some of you crazy cats even say you're from Olympia.

Why is it that folks from the center, down to the right and across the libertarian left always blame the woes of state government on "Olympia?" This is the curse of being the state capital, I guess. Though, last time I was checking, I hadn't done anything to anyone in Snohomish County, but they can go ahead and blame Olympia for failures of state employees who might not even work in Olympia, or failures of elected officials who live near them and just visit here a few times a year.

Anyway, that may not make sense to anyone not living in my head, but it just rubs me the wrong way when people use "Olympia" when they mean to say "my representatives in the legislature and state government."

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was Don Ward this morning in Sound Politics. He typed out that he'd rather be down at the Tumwater Brewery than at the state capitol covering the special session. I assume he could have written "at a bar" and just used the brewery as convenient local color. I took the opportunity to poke the out of towner, pointing out that a corrupt businessman had shuttered the old site.

Don's response:

The Capitol building right now is an empty building. Looking at old wornout brewing equipment is always preferable to looking at old wornout politicians...

In addition to the lack of hope towards Democracy, his comment is just weak.